As others have already pointed out, with an hourly contract the freelancer owes you his time and not the product. If you want to make sure to receive the desired result the fixed price contract is the way to go.

Yes, the client should have been more proactive on checking screenshots and such. He is now owning that. With that said, I still think the situation should be investigated by the Upwork team. He can't get his money back, but we also don't want freelancers like this on the platform. If all the client says is true, then the freelancer(s) should not be on the platform.

"Fairness is giving all people the treatment they earn and deserve. It doesn't mean treating everyone alike-Coach John Wooden"

This was NOT the right person for the job. The sooner you stop worrying about that freelancer and start putting your project first, the better.

I actually hired another developer 2 weeks ago for the same money (yes, they matched the price and completed in 2 weeks what the other developer spent 2.5 months on), and I have a working app already, however that doesn't mean I will let go of the fact that the first developer cheated me of my time and money.

Was this a new freelancer? It seems Upwork doesn't verify profiles until someone has their first job. I'm assuming it's so they don't invest time in anyone who isn't going to bring in money, but it's opened a new scam which is to create a new profile and scam people out of 1-2 weeks of pay and bail.

This is why you have to be careful with new freelancers and should avoid anyone where $1000 is like 10 year's salary for some countries. Those countries where $1 lasts them a year is where this happens, because $1000 doesn't go far in any first world place. It's totally worth it for them to spam the site with profiles, get one sucker and then bail with the $1000, because you just bought them and their whole family a year's rent. Someone that isn't broke wouldn't do something like this, because $1000 is not worth it and they'd rather keep their Upwork account, because it's worth much more. Another reason to stick with freelancers with a long history on the site.

If you really like a freelancer and they have no history, then the best thing is to give them a test and see how it works out first. Invest a small amount, and then you'll know if you can invest more.

I'm guessing you went cheap, because these people usually log 8-10 hours/day to get you good. It's been 2 weeks, so that's a really low rate.

The OP is new to the platform and thus made some mistakes but the critical one was agreeing to change the job from fixed price to hourly. There’s absolutely no reason to do that and the freelancer took advantage by stalling until the review period passed. There are freelancers who dislike the time tracker so I wouldn’t question a request to switch from hourly to fixed but not the other way around and as someone else wrote, Upwork would do clients a favor by dismissing this freelancer if he won’t give a refund.

Am I crazy but I have. Is that weird? lol I tell them hourly if I can't estimate. For instance, I had someone hit me up for doing quick reviews of site SEO stuff. A site could have 10 pages or a million pages, so I told them it would have to go hourly.

Am I crazy but I have. Is that weird? lol I tell them hourly if I can't estimate. For instance, I had someone hit me up for doing quick reviews of site SEO stuff. A site could have 10 pages or a million pages, so I told them it would have to go hourly.

No, I haven't and yes, it ain't easy coming up with a fixed price estimate for a largish project. But when the client specifies a fixed price and it's not obviously a placeholder, then I assume that's all the client can afford to spend, so switching to hourly wouldn't gain me anything because I have no intention of running up the hours and then telling the client, oops, we're about to go over your original budget because this is taking longer than I thought it would.